Norwegian 'disgust' at Italy's Hitler wine

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A Norwegian holidaying in Italy came in for a nasty surprise when he stumbled upon a rack of 'Hitler' wine openly for sale in a local grocery shop.

"I have no personal connection to what happened during the war, but I naturally reacted with disgust," Håvard Furulund, who works at a Toyota dealership in Trondheim, told Norway's Adressa newspaper.

The bottles, sold in a shop on the Rimini seafront, had a shelf all of their own, where they were sold alongside bottles of wine celebrating the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

They sported images of the Nazi leader, along with swastikas and Nazi slogans.

"There can only be two kinds of people who are buying this wine," Furulund told The Local. "You have people who actually identify with these kinds of thoughts, and you have young people haven't lived through the Second World War, so they think it's funny. It is almost a joke."

The Italian wine-maker Vini Lunardelli, which produces Hitler wine as part of its 'Historical' line, has been attacked in the past, with Italian prosecutors threatening it under a law which makes it a crime to glorify fascism.

Its Hitler bottles are embellished with slogans such as "Ein Folk! Ein Reich! Ein Fuhrer!", and feature old propaganda pictures of the Nazi leader.

The company's 'Il Ventennio' line celebrates Mussolini, with wines carrying names like 'Il Duce' and 'Il Camerata', while the Communist Collection features Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Marx and Marshall Tito, leader of the former Yugoslavia.